Page 2 of Reaper Unhinged
It wasn’t a question.
Uriel’s expression was sincere. “Of course.”
Keon locked gazes with him for a long beat, but whatever he saw in Uriel’s eyes must have been enough to satisfy him because his shoulders relaxed a fraction.
There was only one more thing I needed to find out. “Um…does anyone know where the entrance to Purgatory is?”
* * *
Luckily for me,Uri knew where to take us. His wings were gone, but he could still do his nifty teleport thing, and it brought us to a side street a few meters away from the entrance to an underground train station in East Necro.
It was a small station I’d never stopped at before.
“Purgatory is in there?” It was super early, but people were already up and about, ready to start the daily grind. In an hour this place would be crawling. “You can’t be serious.”
His expression was deathly serious, though. “We need to take a train three platforms along. The entrance to Purgatory is there.” He shrugged. Admittedly there was no train station here a century ago, just thick forestland and tales of monsters to keep humans at bay. Now, with the advance of technology, we’ve had to adapt. “The scythes open the way for a Dominus, and a celestial can also open the door. Humans are safe. Trust me.”
“I trust you, Uri. Let’s do this.”
We headed across the street and down the steps into the underground. It smelled musky and kinda gross, but I was damned if I breathed through my mouth and tasted the air.
Yuck.
It was strange to think that Mal came this way on a regular basis. That he came down here and rode the train. The world rumbled with the sound of said train. There was no one manning the ticket barriers, and they lay open, letting in anyone who dared venture forth. The booth where a human would have sat selling tickets was closed, glass cracked, and sprayed red and blue with graffiti.
A white sheet of paper was pasted to the wall by the booth. The wordsBlood Drivewere written in bold red ink.
Yeah, this was one of the off-the-grid stations. The place people would get off if they wanted to avoid paying for a trip, so I was surprised to see so many suits. Uri and I stuck out like a sore thumb in our casual gear. Dean had loaned the celestial a leather jacket with a fur collar. It looked good on him.
He led the way, and I followed him past the pointless barrier and left into a tiled tunnel decorated with old posters sitting behind glass. SeveralBlood Driveposters were pasted to the glass, obscuring the original advertisements.
A woman sat on the ground clutching a baby to her chest, her dark eyes pits of sorrow in her face. I could see the tile through her barely corporeal form.
A ghost.
She held out her ghost baby like an offering.
I faltered. “Uri…”
His jaw tightened. “They slip through the cracks sometimes,” he said. “The ones who die alone. The ones without someone to care. Not every soul finds its way to a Soul Savers, and not every soul is picked up by a reaper.”
“Well this one will be.” My hand tingled as my scythe signaled its appearance.
Uri gently gripped my elbow. “You can’t. Not now. Not until we’ve finished in Purgatory.”
Shit. Of course. If I took her now, she’d be ejected into the ether with the other souls I intended to save and… An awful thought occurred to me. How could I have missed it. “Uri, what happens to all the souls now? Cassius said they used the voralexes to siphon the souls from our scythes and convert them into energy, but did they also need the voralexes to recycle them?”
He looked momentarily stunned. “I don’t know.” He frowned. “If the Beyond was still recycling souls then it means that the natural reproduction of souls isn’t enough to maintain a human population.”
And with the voralexes gone, humanity would eventually die out anyway. Fuck. “I’ll need to speak to Cassius about this. We need a solution and fast. A power source for the Beyond won’t be enough.”
“Please…..” The ghost’s lament, finally verbalized, reached my ears. “Peace…”
“I’ll be back for you and your baby. I promise.”
She slumped back against the tile as if spent, and her dark gaze glazed over.
We passed several more spirits trapped here in the underground. Not the usual alert ghosts—the ones who’d been given purpose by Soul Savers. Not the registered ones, but the ones that had slipped through the cracks. You could tell the difference by the despair in their eyes, by the slow, sluggish way they moved. They were remnants. They were lost. We stood on the platform with a few other people waiting for the train.
